Returning Speedily

After Nephi was given marvelous promises by the Lord and commanded to “go and declare unto [his] people” the warnings from God, we read that “he did stop and did not go unto his own house, but did return unto the multitudes” (Helaman 10:11-12).  I’ve always been impressed by his immediate change in course in order to follow direction from the Lord.  After all he had just been through, surely he would have been justified in going home first and resting before turning back to preach to the wicked people.  But he immediately did what the Lord asked and made no attempt to go and meet his own needs.  Alma showed a similar faithfulness when he was commanded to go back to the city of Ammonihah to preach: “Now it came to pass that after Alma had received his message from the angel of the Lord he returned speedily to the land of Ammonihah” (Alma 8:18).  He didn’t rest and come back a few days later to follow the angel’s counsel—he went “speedily”.  Both of these examples remind me of the Savior’s statement to the man who asked if he could first go and bury his father before following Christ.  Jesus said to him, “Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead” (Matt 8:22).  I think the message here to the man was that nothing was more important than following the Savior, and like Nephi, we should seek to immediately follow what the Lord requires.  I don’t think that the Savior was trying to say that caring for family wasn’t important; rather, He was emphasizing that we must put spiritual things above the temporal in our lives.